At what age will my baby dragon start eating salad?

[LaDragonEcho]

my baby beardie is about 7 inches long and im guessing a little over 2 months old... i have got him to eat 2 small pieces of a grape and one small piece of cantaloupe. i have been feeding him his crickets and he eats pretty well im just wondering when i should expect him to start taking any interest in fruits and veggies without it being a chore to get him to eat it... :?

 

[brittani299]

Both of mine started eating greens at about 6-7 months of age. Each beardie is different though

 

[scipherneo]

Mine's really young, under 5-6 months, and if I leave a little bowl of baby spinach in there for him while I'm off at school the whole thing will be gone by the time I get home.

 

[w0554096]

Hello,
Another member on the site made a post about putting the greens on papertowel. Apparently it makes it much easier for them to see, and she's had much more success getting babies to eat greens this way.

On a note to Scipherneo, spinach shouldn't be fed frequently if it all, due to it's high oxalates and possible calcium binding qualities.

 

[TrueSpiderGeek]

I always hear of baby beardies being stubborn when it comes to greens. As soon as I brought home little Rango, he ate a snippet of kale right from my hands. He's about 4 months old now, and he absolutely destroys kale, collard greens, endives, bananas (rare treats), mango, carrots, bok choy, and another vegetable I can't remember the name of. Whenever I place the fresh veggies in there, he eats the first bit out of my hands then eats out of the bowl. I suppose beardies really are completely different. I've never ever had a problem with Lil' Rango not eating his veggies.

 

[LaDragonEcho]

Well i am going to mix a couple of ideas and suggestions together... hopefully monday i will be going out of town to get more live food and i'll go to walmart and get whatever i can find in the following list: collard greens, Butternut squash, endive, cactus pad,Dandelion leaves, mustard greens,kale....anything else u think i should add? just let me know!
i would have bought these first thing but we could not find them at our supermarket and we live in a very small town. I will get some squash and chicken baby food tomorrow and try to see if he is interested at all in either and ill try the wet paper towel instead of a dish and try using the baby food as "dressing" and see if this helps interesting him...

either way i guess he is still pretty young and he'll be fine with just insects for a while but i still will try getting him to like veggies!

 

[w0554096]

Hello,
You don't need to wet the papertowel, just a dry piece will be fine. Maybe try dropping one piece of greens on it at a time and see if it gets his attention.
I don't know what you'll be able to find at Walmart veggie wise. They should carry butternut squash, but neither one of my walmarts carries any greens. Of course, I'm in Canada so it may be different for you. Good luck.

 

[BeardedBayou]

I had good luck offering greens with live worms mixed in. The movement attracted my young beardie and he now loves his greens.

 

[LaDragonEcho]

YAY!!!! i just successfully fed him some Bok Choy!!! i put a paper towel in his enclosure and dropped small pieces in one by one and he eventually go curious and took one and i watched him eat it and while i went to tear some more to drop in when i looked up he had another piece in his mouth...he only ate about 3 pieces so far but its a start!!! better than force feeding!!!!!

and i dont feed worms...or at least i havent yet...but i feed crickets now and ill be getting my dubia in real soon...

 

[w0554096]

That's great that you got him to eat some veggies. I would like to mention that Bok Choy is not reccomended to feed daily, but is fine once or twice a week. Since he's not eating many veggies right now anyway you don't really need to worry about it, but see if you can find some other greens to feed him.

Once you get your dubia doing, you can put them in a smoothe sided bowl with some veggies and they won't be able to escape. Same theory as the worms, he may become more interested in the greens since the dubia are making them move.
Good luck. Glad the papertowel trick worked for you.

 

[LaDragonEcho]

Ok! i was thinking about trying that but i was wondering if mealworm dishes work good for keeping in dubia...i have one that i bought a few years ago and i was wondering if it would work because it worked for the mealworms and if not how tall of sides does it need to have because he is just so small and i heard when they are juvies that they eat better on lower edged things so like a flatter surface :/ just let me know what works and thankyou so much!

 

[w0554096]

I'm actually not sure how high it needs to be, as I don't feed dubia. They're illegal where I live, and I prefer worms.
I know some people use ashtrays, and since most of them aren't too high sided, I'm sure something lower will work, as long as it's smooth plastic or glass. I use a small glass bowl from the dollarstore for my dragons, but I'm not sure if it would work on a baby. You'd probably be fine with something that has 1.5 inch sides or so.
Maybe someone who feeds dubia will chime in, or provide a picture of what they use.

 

[catsclawfurniture]

For feeding my baby beardies baby dubia, I just use a jar lid! However, since jar lids do have a bit of "feet", the dubia can crawl out at times. Mine are too small to do this right now, but maybe your beardie is tall enough, you can get a shallow ceramic rammekin dish. They are completely smooth on the inside so the dubia can't crawl up.

 

[Chaosadnd1]

I am soo trying the paper towel trick when I get home. Mine won't even look at mustard/collard greens.

 

[ThomasP]

I'm debating buying a sub adult (14in) from lllreptiles, should it already be earing salad at that size? I've no idea what age it would be by then